VOX PROTOCOL: Chapter Three

Olive Branch

Jun 19, 2026

[Author’s Note: I was hoping to have this be subscriber-only, but still include non-paid subscribers. The Substack UI is plainly not optimized for that, so I’ve made it available to everyone. Of course, I would love to hear folks’ thoughts as we go along, and that feature prevented comments! So this will be available to everyone going forward. I’d rather have readers than fight with the UI!

Vox Protocol Table of Contents

Olive Branch

“I see the Vox isn’t above his own ruses.” Masadi spoke under his breath as he handed Andri two flutes of champagne, once the mingling hour got underway. She watched the Cetians gliding around, speaking to the Vox’s entourage and pages, triggering novel chains of thought in their targets and exploring the results with gentle psychic prods. Masadi took a deep breath. “I wasn’t expecting schemes from the Vox, not right out the gate. Get some champagne into him. See what comes out.”

Andri made a small hmm deep in her throat, shooting a look at Lance. He shadowed her, expression professionally blank, and hugged the wall. Andri extended a flute to the Vox, shoving down her intermixed feelings of rage, dread, and intrigue. He singled me out and watched me specifically. I need to get to the bottom of this.

He accepted the champagne, smiling down at a tall table bashfully. “What is it you humans call this gesture? I’ve studied your diplomatic language. An ‘olive branch’, was it?”

“Guess you could call it that.” Andri draped her forearms over the high cocktail table, finding it the perfect height for her, then glanced up at him. His breathing grew shallow for a moment, eye tracing her exposed cleavage. “So. You set that encounter up earlier? To meet with me on purpose, under false pretenses?”

His eyes flickered to her cleavage again, but beyond the extra moment revealing his interest, he didn’t even blink. She kicked herself internally. Damn it—what does this man want?

“Yes.” He had a deep voice, lilting and interesting. “You know that, of course. What could it be, if not deliberate?”

Fair enough. Andri didn’t believe in kismet or coincidence—especially not in the twin worlds of politics and diplomacy. “Why were you watching me? Why the interest? I’m just the agricultural attaché. Wanted to spend the day with me, try to mine all my deep thoughts on hydroponic cereal yields? I could stun you with everything I can say on aquaculture, if you’ve got five hours and a pillow handy.”

The Vox studied her; up close, she could see that they’d altered his nanite tattoos in the hours since she’d seen him at the hydroponics facility. Thin veins of platinum and gold now glittered along the swirling thick lines of white, blue, and black, all signifying his political and administrative training, and his status as the Vox. Like many nanite tattoos, they shifted and undulated with his pulse, beads of pigment quivering under his skin.

“I’d heard the human ambassador traveled with an agricultural attaché who is very skilled… and very beautiful. And,” he quirked an eyebrow here, “I heard she had a taste for Abni-S’zaelyn. Unusual for your species—far more so for Skelow, whom you resemble. I hoped to see what I was up against, particularly if the human mission liked to use you to seduce government officials. I wanted to get your measure before you knew me as the Vox.”

Andri’s heart lurched. Uh, oh. So he has heard about the engagement ruses between me and our Lance. But she trained her face, twitching one eyebrow in return. “Oh? What’ve you heard?”

“Only that you were with an Abni-S’zaelyn.” He sipped champagne, then examined the glass and the fine bubbles inside. He spoke coolly, without flinching, even when the topic turned delicate. “Brave of you; you might know the Skelow revile our size, our culture, and our anatomy, while other species sneer or scoff at us. Fear of our height and other… abnormalities… are at play. Your people are physically similar to the Skelow—smaller than my kind, shorter, more brittle. You don’t mind our differences? I’ve heard intimacy with my kind can be uncomfortable for yours. Especially the women.”

Andri couldn’t resist shooting Lance a quick look, seeing his neck flush a deep crimson. He kept his eyes on the far wall, unfocused, observing for threats… but she knew he listened closely. She took a tiny, intrigued sip of her champagne, eyes on the Vox. Unable to help herself, Andri thought about Lance in their most private moments together, the so-called abnormal parts of his anatomy included. She’d gotten quite used to them by now, but still she knew distantly that most humans would still be shocked if she described the tulip-like shape and its bloom, or what it was like to be with him.

“Maybe I prefer it.” When she saw the skin between the Vox’s tattoo’s grow rosy, she knew she’d piqued his interest… or embarrassed him. For all she knew, the Vox covered up some taboo interest in humans himself. In Andri’s experience, most humanoids couldn’t help curiosity about each other, including intimate curiosity—that heady combination of difference and familiarity. “What about you? Particularly interested in humans?”

He drank deeper of the champagne, and she noticed the bleached-gold sheen at the tips of his long eyelashes. Before the gamma-ray attack, he must’ve spent hours each day in the sun.

“Now, would I be the Vox for Zehyr, in this cultural exchange with you, if I wasn’t interested in humans?” He finished his champagne, though with his height and heft, the broad plane of his chest and shoulders, Andri knew she’d need to pour a lot of it into him to see any change in his volubility.

As if reading her mind—he probably had—Masadi appeared with the bottle and topped them up.

“Making the rounds,” he said, smiling at the Vox. “Do you like it? It’s an extra brut champagne. We brought it with us from a region called ‘France’. It’s some of the best Earth has to offer.”

“I’ve never tasted anything like it before.” The Vox again looked at Andri, taking another sip before he spoke. “A novel experience. Dry and astringent… the slightest bit sweet, but not too much.”

“And do you enjoy novel experiences?” Masadi asked, poking that brain where he wanted it.

“Immensely.” The Vox drank half his flute, then seemed to make a decision, before quite deliberately putting the glass down. “Attaché Kordova—were you emotionally involved with an Abni-S’zaelyn? Or was it just intimacy? I’ve heard interesting things about you, though all of it contradictory. Is the relationship still going on?”

Andri opened her mouth, but zero sound emerged. While she respected Masadi’s order to keep up the absurdity of his new ruse—that she and the Lance had nothing to do with each other—she found it difficult to outright lie about this. Especially with Lance standing a mere meter and a half away, listening, steely eyes unfocused as he scanned for threats. Like any good security, he had a knack for blending back into the shadows and the décor, but for Andri, she couldn’t stop seeing the hard, lithe lines of his body or the high arch of his cheekbones, the strong sweep of his jaw, the opaque, silvery gleam of his eyes.

Fortunately, Masadi felt no such compunction about lying… as usual. “Nothing of the sort. A passing dalliance. Serious while it lasted, but ultimately not right for either party. We were sad to see him go—eh, Andromeda?”

Andri stood with her mouth slightly open, searching for words, not sure how to lie here. She found it hard enough just to keep her eyes off Lance, let alone lie and say she didn’t have feelings for him.

The Vox examined her, a deep furrow between his pretty eyes. “I’m sorry—the event obviously troubles you. I shouldn’t tease or pry.” He finished his second glass of champagne, accepting more with a nod to Masadi. “He meant a great deal to you? If you don’t mind me asking?”

Andri shot a resentful look at Masadi. “Yes. Yes, he did. More than you can imagine.”

Masadi held her gaze unflinching, having zero fear, assured of his own rightness without explaining himself, and Andri had a wild desire to smack or kick him. As if he could sense it, Masadi twitched one brow provocatively. What? He seemed to ask the question psychically, but Andri wondered if she could be imagining that. Try it, Corporal. I dare you.

The Vox spoke, cutting through their glares. “Ambassador, did you send this Abni-S’zaelyn man away without Attaché Kordova’s agreement?” He fixed his eyes on Andromeda. “You still hold feelings for this man, perhaps?”

Andri swallowed, her throat dry. “You know, I… I’d prefer not to discuss it. Is that alright?”

“Completely.” The Vox sounded kind, understanding; he even shot a distinctly disapproving look Masadi’s way, as if he sensed that Lance may have been dismissed or dispensed with, in order to clear Andri’s path and see her clear to flirt with the Vox.

He wasn’t entirely wrong. While Andri could continue carrying on with Lance in secret, she did feel as though Masadi had dismissed him, swept their relationship under the rug the moment it no longer served him or the mission.

Probably sensing the Vox’s current aggression, and even though it made him smirk, Masadi patted Andri on the shoulder and left the bottle of champagne with her.

“I trust you know your way around this? I’d like to speak to the Vox’s engineering advisor… see about some reports. Excuse me, both of you.”

Once he’d sauntered off, entirely too proud of himself, Andri poured the Vox another glass.

“Can I ask you something about this afternoon? More a… reference question.”

He kept his gaze fixed on her, even as he drank. “After the way I tricked you? Seems only fair. Ask me anything you like.”

Andri’s cheeks and lips tingled; probably the champagne. “Can you tell me more about why you had me hit that protester in the stomach?” She hoped desperately to change the subject. “I understand it’s cultural, but I’d still like to know more.”

The Vox blinked once in a deliberate fashion, almost Skelow-like, and put his champagne down; Andri wondered if he’d studied and refined a put-on Skelow affect as a part of his diplomatic training. Dealing with Skelow would comprise the greatest part of his work, after all.

“I would think that you, as a member of an Abni-like species, would know already?” He frowned at her. “You seem properly civilized in that fashion, unlike the Skelow.”

His words surprised her. Andri’s translator paused on the word “Abni-like,” providing the nebulous additional translation “humanoid.” Her cochlear implant didn’t sound very confident, however.

“When you say ‘Abni-like’, do you mean like yourself in form and biology?” Andri asked, cocking her head. The Vox studied her, immediately mirroring the gesture slightly, as if he couldn’t help it. “Are the Skelow ‘Abni-like’, for instance?”

The Vox righted his head, chuckling before going in for another sip of champagne, as if to have a think.

“No. That would be ‘Skeloid’; I’m sure you’ve heard this word across the Trade Federation. All matters of form and biology hold Skelow at the center, like a star in a stellar system. I’m Skeloid; you’re Skeloid; your friends the Cetians are Skeloid. Even the Karabari—a million scourges upon their genitals—are Skeloid. There seem to be a lot of us scattered across the stars.”

Andri smiled. A million scourges across their genitals. I need to remember that phrase. The humanoid and mysterious Karabari—or their inscrutable cargo-cult Priests, in any case—had initiated the gamma-ray attack on Zehyr, using rare Galactic Council-era tech.

“We call that humanoid, of course.” Andri smiled in self-deprecation, and the Vox accordingly raised his glass once, as if to say naturally; they both drank. Andri continued. “So what is ‘Abni-like’, then?”

He cocked his head, showing that he guessed the gesture’s meaning and repeated it back. Interesting. He’s thoughtful. Curious. Considerate, but he would be.

“I’ve met few Abni-like species, and it’s our contention that few exist. You yumei are definitively Abni-like, even though you’re small. Your friends the Tardek… they may be Abni-like, for all their strangeness. We don’t know what to make of their violent ‘Kack’ impulse to kill each other on sight. Some sort of evolutionary bolt hole.” When Andri laughed, the corner of his mouth twitched, revealing a flare of three smile lines crowning his cheekbone.

“On Earth, we call ourselves and the Tardek—and you Abni as well, I suspect—‘Hold My Beer’ species. It’s an old joke from the twenty-first century, when the Cetians first descended on us, and always tended to treat us like reckless younger siblings. They’re a ‘Holds Beer’ species, of course.” When the Vox cocked his head more extremely in question, blinking four times in the near-universal Skelow expression of polite curiosity, Andri went on. “When you tell a buddy to hold your beer, it means you’re about to do something stupid. We used to use the phrase in the Star Navy.”

The Vox chuckled. “I like that you have military experience yourself; you’ll easily understand my point. To be Abni-like is to be properly civilized—to value the proper things. Your culture is like ours, with an organized and vaunted military that earns honor and prestige everywhere it travels. Your people show signs of being even more like us in your past. We don’t find that often among the stars, even with all the known galaxy’s peoples strung between them.”

Andri finished her champagne, and a page moved in immediately to refill it. She realized that a number of pages flitted about closely, listening to the conversation and seeing to their every need… and making sure no one else approached. She sighed internally. Masadi, you old schemer. Back at it. You never miss a beat, do you?

“So the social need for me to hit the man who attacked me, the this-for-that… it wasn’t some sort of Skelow hatat? I was wondering if maybe Zehyrians had altered the idea of hatat into a version of physical justice, maybe after encountering the Skelow or joining the STF. Perfect balance and reciprocity, even in violence.”

The Vox made a face instantly, the corners of his mouth turning down in the common humanoid signal of dismay and disgust. Just as quickly, he hid the expression away and smoothed his handsome facial features to resemble a beautiful plane of marble, smooth and opaque.

“K’hah—no. It’s an ancient custom on Zehyr, hailing from long before our meeting with the Skelow, from before the days when we knew of them, or their infuriating obsession with hatat. Perhaps you’ll recognize this from your own culture—and I suspect you will—but in the old times on Zehyr, we believed that only blood would wash away an injustice. Honor killings were common, typically between family groups, but sometimes committed as a matter of personal justice between one individual and another. These killings could and did devolve into cycles for generations—revenge taken on the head of revenge, blood washing blood, until the original injustice disappeared. Many Zehyrian regional cultures speak of a god or spirit of Justice, who gifted them with Law.”

Andri nodded slowly; though she specialized in biology and agriculture, no child on Earth made it through secondary education without reading the Orestia.

“And under Law, revenge becomes an act of cooler justice determined ahead of time, depending on the crime?”

The Vox’s eyes sparkled. “Not quite that. Under Law, you may strike once in recrimination, and the strike must be satisfactory. If you go too far, you’ll be censured. We don’t believe in taking justice too great a distance from the hands of those who were wronged. If a matter may be settled by the parties in question, it should be. The bonds of society heal stronger and tidier that way. To be civilized is to exchange blows and be done with it—to be satisfied and walk away.” He placed his palm over the mouth of his champagne flute when a page attempted to refill it. “We find the Skelow arbitration process and exchange of currency for justice extremely arcane and uncivilized—much as we must deal with it whenever we leave Zehyr. You humans don’t exchange coin for ills, do you? You don’t seem that way.”

Andri shook her head; again, the Vox studied the move and, perhaps unconsciously, mirrored it in miniature. He spoke far more than Lance ever did, which took her aback; she’d gotten the impression that taciturnity was part of the culture. Some of it clearly had to do with Lance’s profession and personality, of course.

Or maybe the Vox was the weird one.

Andri turned her mind to his question. “We don’t. There was once a process of civil suits on Earth, but we did away with it entirely. We don’t even have a form of fungible currency on the planet’s surface. The accumulation of capital is uncivilized, and it was so toxic for our society that it nearly destroyed Earth… and all of us with it. When we reformed the planet into the Republic, we outlawed money completely. Versa only exists as a means of dealing in goods and trades on the colonies and protectorates. It’s all scrip on Earth—credits to get you the things you need.”

Having been studying her nods as well, the Vox now offered one with a softened expression. “That, yes. You understand. It’s not painful to give money for an ill done, then walk away; it’s far more excruciating to look someone in the eye, to have to experience their blows and their pain in turn. Currency carried you away from your cultures of honor, from taking care of one another?”

Andri thought about it. “Earth’s cultures were more communitarian before capital, so… I suppose that’s true. You’d see a great deal of monarchy, warrior kings, great halls, all of that. When they colonized the western continents and subjugated the peoples there, capital accumulation and mercantilism picked up. That created the Early Modern period, then the Capitalist period… the great wars, and the cataclysms.”

She trailed off, thinking of North America and parts of Eurasia, choked with radiation and strewn with the ruins of enormous cities, the blackened shells of houses, the homes of millions. The destroyed jewels of a lost age.

The Vox made a small, sweeping gesture with his hand, looking around at the Cetians and pages in attendance. “And hence your subservient client relationship with the Cetians began, after your cataclysms left you weakened. We began with the Skelow in a similar situation.” He paused, eyes on the form of the Cetian ambassador del’Kor’en, and Andri detected harshness in the set of his jaw. “We find ourselves in that position again, in fact.”

Andri tried not to rile, knowing that simply correcting him wouldn’t be wise; better to figure out where his misapprehension came from. It revealed more about his view of the world than anything—the Zehyrian view of the world, and their history.

“What happened to Zehyr before you came into contact with the Skelow? Disasters? Or global war?”

The Vox examined her, eyes narrowed and his voice crisp. “Surely you’ve deduced it by now? The moment we discovered the splitting of the atom, our people devised a way to make weapons a thousand-fold more destructive. Just as you did. Yes? A large portion of your planet remains irradiated to this day. This I’ve heard; this the entire Trade Federation has heard. And still, you sling those filthy irradiated weapons into the heart of your enemies’ ships. You’re a strange species, yumei.”

Andri nodded, knowing this story well. She kept her eyes on the target, not to be dissuaded. “And you had a cataclysmic war with atomic weapons? What was it about?”

“What is it always about?” The Vox glared at nothing in particular, tattoos undulating under his skin with his emotions. “In those days, our nations and polities fought over everything—whether to respond to the aliens in our skies, whether to trade with them, if it would be honorable… who should speak for us. It’s how my position—the Vox—was first conceived. The first Vox made a preliminary agreement with the Skelow, but….”

He paused as if haunted, the skin around his eyes pale. Andri poured them both a little more champagne, and he nodded in appreciation before going on.

“The agreement set off a chain reaction of disbelief, paranoia, and hostilities. The exchange of atomic weapons on our planet’s surface was swift and devastating when it began. The Skelow intervened… offered us radiation-consuming nanites for a century-long loan. We owed a tithe of tradable goods for a hundred years thereafter, and our global government formed to manage the relationship and its demands. Nearly half of everything we produced for more than half a century went to Kalur, until we improved our methods and recovered some.” He took a sip of champagne. “I see your ambassador there—he’s half-Cetian? What did your people owe the Cetians for their assistance? I’ve wanted to know since I heard about your people, about some of your history as spacefarers. The Cetians got you into the stars… and at what price?”

Andri almost dropped the party line, the thing she’d been taught since childhood at Indoc Centers, drenched in the language of their educational programs: that the Cetians helped, preserved, and uplifted humanity. That they had a special relationship, Earth and Tau Ceti, as neighbors. That the Cetians gave according to their strengths, and humanity gave according to their own.

She opted to simply state the truth without the gloss of an Indoc education; years away from Earth, in conversation with other species, made it easier to see her culture from multiple perspectives. The Vox seemed like the type of trained politician who could smell bullshit, and she didn’t want to come out of this reeking.

“When the Cetians run into a situation that requires guns and military training, they tend to send us humans in the Star Navy. When I served as a corporal and science officer aboard ERSN vessels during the Praezorian Wars, we always called it ‘blood for psi’—the Cetians’ tendency to send us into dangerous situations to avoid getting their hands dirty. When the Praezorian Empire attacked us, the Cetians could very well have been next; we essentially fought the war for both species, protected our territory and theirs. As a government, they didn’t lift a finger to help. Naturally, they don’t see it that way… but most Star Navy personnel do. It’s still a raw point between our peoples.”

The Vox smiled with dry sincerity, as if surprised into it. “Kh’eza… how familiar it sounds. That’s how the Abni-S’zaelyn Mercenary Guild was built, you know? To offer protection to Skelow ventures and colonies. To offer our bodies and our training as a tradable good. You’re very Abni-like.” He smiled wider, taking in Andri’s size—downright miniature, by his standards. “Pocket Abni, if you’ll allow it.”

Andri smiled, showing her teeth—especially her canines. “I will not, but it’s cute anyways. What does kh’eza mean? I didn’t get anything from my translator.”

“Ah… a statement of irony, and yet… perfect rightness. It’s an expletive… something like a laugh, but not quite.” Rosy color again reached his cheeks. “Your champagne is beginning to rise to my head. May I give you my contact card, Attaché? In case either of us has any further… questions or commentary.”

Andri felt herself blushing, accepting the white and blue card with both hands. She could feel Lance’s eyes on her, like a hot knife in her soul, and shame immediately crept in.

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